Updated edition of ‘Journey to the Common Good’ now available
by Westminster John Knox Press | Special to Presbyterian News Service
LOUISVILLE — A decade ago, Walter Brueggemann called the church to journey together for the good of our community through neighborliness, covenanting, and reconstruction in “Journey to the Common Good.” He distilled this challenge to its most basic issues: Where is the church going? What is its role in contemporary society? What lessons does it have to offer a world enmeshed in turbulent times?
Today, the dual crises of the coronavirus and the disease of racial injustice present daunting new challenges for the church as it seeks the good of its neighbors. Brueggemann addresses these crises in a new introduction to his book, “Journey to the Common Good, Updated Edition,” originally published in 2010.
“Journey to the Common Good” spoke to an era defined in large part by America’s efforts to rebuild from an age of terror as it navigated its way through an economic collapse. In this updated edition, Brueggemann links the wilderness tradition of Exodus to the current crises of the pandemic and racial injustice as a framework to help the church navigate this time of risk and vulnerability and to pursue a genuine social alternative to the governance of Pharaoh. The answer to the question of the church’s role in society is the same answer God gave to the Israelites thousands of years ago: love your neighbor and work for the common good.
“Walter Brueggemann has an uncanny ability to take the sprawling, sometimes unwieldy Scriptures and make them intimate and approachable,” says John Pavlovitz, author of “A Bigger Table.” “He allows us to enter these ancient stories, not from some lofty theoretical distance, but from the ground level where we can experience them in a deeply human way. ”Journey to the Common Good” is a prescient and necessary reminder of the need for a faith that meets the wounds of the world.”
“Journey to the Common Good, Updated Edition” is now available from Westminster John Knox Press.
Walter Brueggemann is a beloved Old Testament scholar, teacher and preacher. He spent most of his career at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. His books include “Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now,” “Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out,” and “Truth and Hope: Essays for a Perilous Age.”
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